City of the Falling Sky (42 page)

Seckry made to speak a few times before
saying, “You were just defending that girl?”

“
I never meant to kill
anyone,” Gobbledee said. “I just couldn’t sit back and let them do
that to her.”

“
What happened to the other
men?” Eiya asked.

“
They ran away as soon as
they saw the blood. And nobody ever saw them again. Passers by
phoned the Patrol and I was arrested and sentenced to seven years
in prison for unintentional murder. That’s when they gave me the
chlorocalm injection.”

“
What happened to the girl?”
Seckry asked.

“
As the Patrol were dragging
me away, I told her an address to go to. It was the address of my
sister, who I knew would look after her. And all my time in prison
I told myself that when I got out, I would make sure that I’d help
her, make sure she was never homeless again, and that she’d have a
job somewhere decent.”

“
And what happened when you
got out?” Eiya asked. “Did you ever see the girl again?”

“
Oh yes,” Gobbledee said, a
kind smile appearing on his face. “I see Imelda Butterkins every
day.”

From that point onwards, Seckry never again
judged the headmaster by his past, and he vowed to himself that he
would defend the headmaster if any other students began to slate
him. What Gobbledee had done that day, in Seckry’s opinion, was
save someone’s life.

Seckry felt much happier after speaking to
Gobbledee, and his day was improved even more when they came across
Mrs Cutson in the corridor, and saw that she had to pass the
headmaster’s office and enter her inferior office. Before closing
her door, she turned to them dryly and gave an expression of
someone who had been sucking on a soursucker straw for hours with
ten bitterballs dropped in for extra bite.

By this time, Seckry was back in school and
the one person he was petrified of seeing again was Snibble. But he
was nowhere to be seen.

“
Hasn’t showed up for ages,”
Tippian said.

Seckry guessed he would have to confront him
at some point, but maybe it wouldn’t even be until after the summer
holidays.

“
I can’t believe I’m sitting
here with the messiah,” Tenk said that weekend, as they sat in
Tippian’s living room.

“
I’m not the messiah!”
Seckry laughed. “There . . .
was
no messiah.”

“
Mate, I just can’t even get
my head around it. It’s like . . . you were named after yourself.
You were named Seckraman because you had the same colour eyes as
your time travelling self.” He gripped the sides of his head and
did a few disbelieving shakes.

“
I’m sure Vance will explain
it to you if you’d like him to,” Seckry offered.

“
All those paintings!” Tenk
continued. “They were all of you! Do you realise there are people
in shrines right now worshipping and praying to you?”

“
I don’t think he’s ever
gonna get over it, is he?” Seckry said to everyone.

“
Nope,” said
Loca.

“
Hey, Seck,” said Tippian,
pulling a tightly rolled up newspaper out of his pocket. “You wanna
see the headlines?”

“
Do you carry that thing
with you wherever you go now?” said Loca.

“
Of course,” Tippian
defended. “We’re famous! My name’s on the front page, for Gedin’s
sake! This is getting laminated and framed and going up on my
bedroom wall when I’m finished showing it to people.”

“
We made the headlines?”
Seckry asked.

Tippian unrolled the paper and shook it a few
times before pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose
and clearing his throat.

“
Rabbit Man mystery solved
by group of teenagers!” he read, in a deeper voice than normal.
“Young heroes, Seckraman Sevenstars, Tenk Binko, Tippian Furst,
Eiya Tacana, and Loca Thumbsuckle last night thwarted the corrupt
plans of Endrin CEO Kan Darklight, who had been secretly conducting
a mad professor style experiment in his lab.

“
Sources say that Darklight
had convinced himself he could make a time machine by extracting
certain compounds from human bodies, and kidnapped and murdered
twenty people in order to do so.

“
The former student of
Skyfall City University had also been holding a twenty five year
old man captive, and had been pumping him with performance
enhancing drugs in order to use him as a weapon. This man, whose
real name is Danney Plum, is more widely known as the Rabbit
Man.”

“
You hear that, Seck?” said
Tenk, grinning wildly. “We’re heroes! Take that, mum! I ain’t some
lazy bum anymore who sits around in his underwear playing video
games all day, I’m a fully fledged hero!”

Loca rolled her eyes.

“
Tenk, you’re a hero, yes,
but that’s not gonna change the fact that you’re a lazy bum that
sits around playing video games all day. You’re still gonna be that
guy.”

“
Well, that might be true.
But I can wear a t-shirt now saying ‘I’m a Hero,’ while doing it if
I want.”

“
Tenk,” Loca said. “Please
tell me you won’t.”

They sat and talked for most of the morning.
The sun was shining bright and the air was warm so Seckry and Eiya
decided to walk home instead of catching the monorail.

As they got closer, they saw the turning for
the Blacklear, and Seckry paused momentarily.

“
Do we take the dangerous
shortcut, or do we take the safe, long way round?” he
said.

“
Hmm,” Eiya pondered. “I
kind of feel like after the danger we were in last week, taking a
shortcut past a drug smuggling den doesn’t really even compare.
Let’s take it.”

They made their way down the alley and tried
to keep their heads down as they walked past the huge, run down
building on their left, but because they weren’t looking, somebody
leaving the warehouse bumped into them.

Seckry immediately grabbed Eiya and readied
himself to run for his life, but the man they had bumped into put
his hand up to halt them.

He had been carrying a cardboard box which he
had dropped, and the contents were strewn across the floor. Amidst
them were a heap load of books and a pink teddy bear.

“
I’m so sorry,” the man
apologised. “I should’ve been look – wait, you’re Seckraman
Sevenstars, and Eiya Tacana.”

Seckry and Eiya glanced at each other,
slightly frightened and slightly curious as to how this man knew
them.

“
You . . . I owe you
everything. My family . . . we all do, all of us here.”

“
I’m sorry?” said Seckry,
confused.

“
You were the only ones that
figured out a way to infiltrate Endrin. You are the ones who got
Darklight arrested, you are the ones who have saved my daughter, my
family, my friends and myself.”

Suddenly, a young girl rushed out of the
house, the same girl from last time Seckry was here, except this
time, she was smiling. She ran straight to Seckry and slapped her
arms around his waist, pressing her head into his stomach.

“
Thank you,” she said.
“Thank you for not telling him where we were.”

“
I don’t understand,” Seckry
said. “This isn’t . . . a drug smuggling den?”

“
Drug smuggling?” said the
man, laughing lightly. “Is that what used to go on here? We knew
this place had a reputation, and we knew the government were scared
to come down here, but we were never entirely sure why. No, my
friends, there is no drug smuggling going on here. We have been
simply hiding. Hiding from Darklight.”

Eiya stepped towards the man.

“
You’ve been hiding from
Darklight . . . are you saying you’re–”

“
Yes,” said the man. “We are
innoya.”

“
Seckry, this is it!” Eiya
said excitedly. “This is how I’m still alive. This is how I still
exist! There are more innoya!”

“
How you still exist?”
queried the man.

“
I think we have a lot to
talk to you about,” said Seckry. “So that’s why you were so scared
when I saw you?” he addressed to the girl, who was picking up her
teddy.

“
I didn’t want you telling
him we were here,” she said. “If you’d told that evil man he would
have come and taken us away, like he did to the others.”

“
I’m so sorry . . . we
couldn’t save the others,” Seckry said.

The man put his hand up. “Please, you don’t
have to be sorry. What you lot did, we are beyond thankful for. You
tried to save them, we know. You tried your hardest.”

They arranged to meet up with the man, whose
name was Cartell, at a later date, to talk to him about Eiya and
her existence. For now, though, they were going to let the innoya
move out of the Blacklear and find their feet again, in the
knowledge that Darklight was going to be behind bars.

A few days later, Seckry received a phonecall
from Jenniver Layne, telling him that Mrs Plum would be being
reintroduced to her son for the first time since being abducted,
and that he and Eiya might like to provide her with some support.
They had no objection, and were delighted that Mrs Plum would
finally be able to see Danney, so when the doctor arrived in the
square, they joined him at Mrs Plum’s door.

“
Mrs Plum . . . are you okay
with this?” Eiya asked as they got into the doctor’s
car.

“
Oh yes, I’m fine, dear,”
Mrs Plum said, “It’s just another day for me.”

“
Do you know who we’re going
to see?” Seckry asked. “We’re going to see your son,
Danney.”

Mrs Plum smiled politely and raised her
eyebrows.

“
I’ll tell you a
secret,
” she whispered to them. “
This has happened twice
before. They said they’d found him and they took me to see him. But
it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Danney. It was someone else’s
child
.”

When they arrived at the facility, Mrs Plum
was taken into a separate room where a doctor prepared her for
seeing her son and letting her know that he was going to look very
different from how she remembered.

Seckry and Eiya were allowed into the main
room where there was a glass wall dividing the space into two. On
the other side of the glass sat Danney.

He was sitting expectantly, dressed in
hospital robes and a muzzle that covered his mouth.

“
Is that thing necessary?”
Seckry asked.

“
Unfortunately it is,”
explained the doctor. “He’s still having violent outbursts. It’s
only natural for him to do so, but we have to protect our staff. We
can’t afford to take any risks at the moment. Over time, as we see
how he progresses, we may be able to take the protective clothing
away. We’ll be monitoring his behaviour over a period.”

“
Oh, Gedin,” Eiya said
quietly. “Look how much smaller he is. You can see, even with those
robes on, he looks more like a human being now.”

“
Danney Plum had been pumped
with a chemical known as Anabilo-chrominumsite for seventeen
years,” the doctor said. “His body is going to take a while to
adjust to the change, but one day he will be back to his normal
size.”

The door behind them opened and a doctor
escorted Mrs Plum into the room. She stopped walking as soon as she
saw Danney, and stared at him for what seemed like a lifetime. Then
she slowly made her way towards him.

“
Danney?” she said
softly.

Mrs Plum sank to her knees and touched her
fingertips to the glass.

Danney’s eyes were wide open like a dog’s,
staring at his mum’s face with curiosity and recognition. He
kneeled in front of the glass and put his own hand up to hers.

And then he began humming. It was the
lullaby.

They thought Mrs Plum was going to join him,
but she didn’t. She couldn’t because she was sobbing, crying a
flood of tears, but smiling. In between sobs she would hum a note
or two along with him, and then she’d break out into tears
again.

“
We’re going to arrange for
Mrs Plum to come and visit Danney three times a week,” the doctor
told Seckry and Eiya. “In the meantime we’re going to be doing all
we can to bring him back to his natural physical condition and we
have a team of experts that will be providing him with essential
learning skills. We’re going to teach him how to talk again, how to
eat.”

“
Do you think you can teach
him how to love again?” Seckry asked.

They looked at Danney, kneeling in front of
his mother, humming away like a child.

“
Even though Darklight
tortured him beyond belief,” the doctor said. “I don’t think Danney
needs to be taught how to love again.”

When Seckry and Eiya arrived back at the flat
that day, they found a letter addressed to the whole household
lying on the doormat. Seckry decided to let his mum open it.

Coralle, sitting at the kitchen table,
frowned as her eyes scanned the letter quickly. Then she raised her
eyebrows.

“
Are you gonna tell us what
it is?” Leena said impatiently.

“
We are very pleased to
inform you . . .” Coralle muttered. “Plans have been withdrawn . .
.”